4th of July

“Not all those who wander are lost.” - J. R. R. Tolkien

Today is the 4th of July. Of course that means just about nothing here in Zambia, except that it is Saturday, and on Saturday the malls are full of Westerners. So after spending the morning in the office reading (while a pastor and a couple of his employees put some windows into our classroom) I decided to just walk around the city. All day long.

So in the early afternoon I set out from the office on foot. When I got downtown I grabbed lunch at a cafe where they had an "Obama Special," which turned out to be fried chicken and french fries. Not a bad spread for $4, eh?

Then I just wandered up and down the streets of the city for the next three hours. I saw a couple of things that made me chuckle -- a minibus pulling another minibus with a plastic pipe and a string, a gal in a Huskies sweatshirt (I had a Huskies hat on, so we talked for a minute or so), and the Zambian equivalent of Kentucky Fried Chicken. I walked a ways down Cairo Road (the main North/South street) behind some ladies with stuff balanced on their heads. I feel like there are things that I see periodically that really remind me I'm in Africa.

Fun interaction of the day: at one point I took a picture of gas prices, and all of a sudden a guy ran up to me from across the street and asked me some sort of a question in ragged english. After a minute or two I figured out that he was asking if I had a permit to take photos (of course I didn't), and he wanted me to come with him to the police station. Since the guy was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt I decided I didn't believe him, so I asked to see his badge. "No, don't ask me that," he said. "Let's go, let's go." The guy was obviously full of it, so I took my camera out and showed him as I deleted the picture. I probably didn't even need to do that. Anyways, I told him I wouldn't take any more pictures and then just walked away.

Towards the end of the day I rested by the Freedom Statue (above, courtesy this guy), which was erected on the 10th anniversary of Zambia's independance. It struck me that I was there on my country's independance day, half way across the world... I'm not quite sure if that's significant at all, but it was cool nonetheless. I talked with some street kids and bus drivers there for a bit before heading over to the US embassy for the evening and eating burgers with Tracy and Karen. It was interesting to be around so many Americans in the evening after having been the only white person in sight all day long.

I'm going to try to go to a pentecostal church tomorrow that I hear has 3+ hour church services. Should be fun :)